Dear Tech Support, Might I suggest that the entire Silas-Alicorn debate be moved to some meta-section. It has taken over the comments section of an instrumentally useful post, and may be preventing topical discussion.
Can somebody nonpartisan give us the Cliff's Notes of the whole mess? I tried reading it. Then I tried skimming it. It seems to rely on some whole pre-existing unpleasant dynamic between several commenters of which I am currently blissfully unaware, and it also looks quite seriously dull.
It also looks pretty damn childish, despite having lots of fun mature-sounding rationalist words. A silly playground arguments is still a silly playground argument.
Are we really going to do this kind of thing on LessWrong now? Nothing is going to turn away non-committed members quite like a huge load of tedious, irrelevent drama on a front page post. I myself am, at this moment, feeling a moderate urge to say "welp, looks like LW has gone to shit now, oh well, thanks internet drama," and I've been lurking here since the OB days.
It would take a lot of evidence to convince me that this shitstorm is going to end up being productive.
It also looks pretty damn childish, despite having lots of fun mature-sounding rationalist words. A silly playground arguments is still a silly playground argument.
Agreed. Post-grad vocabulary, pre-school behaviour.
Ok. I've just downvoted you for at this point borderline trolling. There are lot of people here who aren't Alicorn. I'm not going to bother discussing your claim that Alicorn didn't benefit from this since there's already enough people wasting time on that in your main subthread. So I'll simply note that I am at least one person who found Alicorn's post very useful. I've used a technique much like what Alicorn layed out here but she makes multiple points that a) allow me to consciously understand what I'm doing better and b) to improve on some aspects of that technique.
Since there are 30 upvotes for the post, I'm pretty sure that multiple other people found this useful (it is possible that some of those votes are due to perceived status but given the anonymous nature of upvoting it seems unlikely that more than a few of them are).
Please stop damaging the signal to noise ratio.
I'm not sure I want to like more people all that much.
I have a generally cheerful disposition, and I have no trouble with civility toward those I dislike. There have been people who clearly disliked me whom I thought well of nonetheless; I've met me, and I recognize this particular combination of attributes isn't to everyone's taste.
But I've never had a situation where I wanted to make an effort to like someone who I didn't like. I think the goals here are typically anti-productive, assuming reasonable socialization skills and some pre-existing friends.
It is useful to like people. For one thing, if you have to be around them, liking >them makes this far more pleasant. For another, well, they can often tell, and if >they know you to like them this will often be instrumentally useful to you.
Let's take a look at these advantages:
More pleasant. Yes, true. Point well taken.
Puppeteering. OK, maybe a bit too harsh, but "instrumentally useful," sounds like that. I certainly want people to do lots of things, but I don't usually trade in on personal relationships quite that way.
Disadvantages:
I read your last section ("Note general failure mode: ...") with amusement as I have found myself following almost the exact train of thought several times recently.
It was an appreciated, although unpleasant, kick-in-the-teeth to realise that my thought process actually belied negative aspects to my character rather than positive ones.
Could I ask for advice then on reversing this situation? What internal monologue, or indeed actions, should be ideally followed based on a situation identical to the one given in the article.
I've noticed that I sometimes have this problem. However, there's a bright side that makes it slightly easier: I've found that generally if I have a pragmatic reason to enjoy someone's company that's generally some major positive trait (e.g. only expert on a certain topic around me, is a better chess player than anyone else around, is the only other Go player around, etc.) This provides a positive trait to start with.
The whole thing about the understanding that other humans have circumstances that help explain actions also is something that's been nagging at the back of my mind for a while as somewhat similar. The phrasing here about using it to actively assume that people had good reasons for their behavior made it click more. There's an old tradition in Judaism about trying to assume that people mean well and when one sees something negative one should assume extenuating circumstances not apparent to you. This idea was heavily promoted by among other people the Chofetz Chaim (he was a major Rabbi living around 1900). Sometimes this sort of view was pushed to points where something is just actively anti-rational (ridiculously contrived stories are sometimes told to Orthodox kids t...
I don't have much to add, but in the spirit of Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate, I want to state that I've found this post very insightful and very useful. Thanks for posting!
Being able to pick out positive traits in people that you might otherwise not be able to stand will help you win in several ways: 1) You'll enjoy life more; 2) You'll get more people on your side; 3) You'll have more access to different modes of thought which, while they may be wrong, can help strengthen the foundations of your own ideas.
This actually does work. I tested it out in my day job, which requires regular interaction with people whose company I do not usually like, and found myself almost enjoying it! We shouldn't be afraid to like people, and to enjoy ourselves, for fear of actually becoming like them. If you make the effort to be friendly to that disagreeable person and find something pleasant about them, you're not making their disagreeable qualities pleasant (and thereby running the risk of adopting them yourself). So, don't be afraid to be nice, and by extension, to tolerate tolerance. This is a lesson I'm still struggling to learn.
I would be interested in fictional examples of when you might use this technique and how you might go about using it.
Okay, sure.
I move to a new town. I look and look and look for apartments, most of which are out of my price range, and finally find one that I can afford. Turns out, I can't stand my landlady. I have to pay her my rent in person, if I want anything in the place fixed I have to go through her, and if I have an issue with a neighbor that doesn't warrant calling the cops, I have to deal with her. Even if I wanted to move again so soon, it's been established that it's damn hard to find a place in this town - it'd take months, during which I'd have to interact with the landlady several times. It would be far more convenient and pleasant if I liked her.
So what don't I like about the landlady? Let's say she has a strong accent from her country of origin that I find challenging to understand; she's paranoid about people paying rent late and usually wants it early; she hires a plumber who leaves debris all over the place whenever he makes a repair; and she has an evil cat, which has bitten me. (Note that I made all these things up before coming up with stories about them.)
The accent represents the difficulty of learning a foreign language. I don't speak a second language at all - I'...
I liked this post - particularly the way it leads you to critique your own inner thought life. I do have some of these habits - particularly noticing interesting or admirable characteristics in people who might be difficult in other ways.
But I do disagree with the idea of making excuses for the other person. Certainly we should be rational enough to realise we don't know exactly why the other person is ignoring me, or driving like a moron, or not showing any consideration to anyone. Perhaps they have an excuse for it, but probably they don't. And in most o...
Alternative title: How not to be a protagonist in Atlas Shrugged.
To clarify, I liked the post.
On an on-topic note, I really liked this post. I can confirm that being able to like people is instrumentally useful. Due to high Agreeableness and Openness, I like everyone by default. It's difficulty for me to explain how I do this, because it's probably done through my personality hardware. I have to try to not like people. But I'll see if I can think of any ways to articulate my cognition on this subject.
These are useful skills to apply to everyone, if you're at all concerned with being "fair" to people. But intentionally selective application of them just strikes me as throwing epistemic hygiene concerns to the wind. Liking the target had better be important.
It is my impression that people generally have an epistemic distortion already and Alicorn's advice would help them overcome it. When we justify our own actions, we place a weight on circumstances and give ourselves a fair benefit of the doubt. When we look for the reasons for other people's actions we often do not know, care to know or just plain care about what the circumstances were. No benefit of the doubt here. Reversing this bias seems a good and healthy thing to do. Judge others as you would judge yourself may sound simple but it takes the sort of persistence that Alicorn outlines.
I know that this is the sort of question you'd precisely expect from someone whose mental defenses were resisting the exercise, but it's still a valid possibility, prior probability ~1%: What if you suspect the person you're dealing with is actually a sociopath?
Learning to like a sociopath is actually extremely DANGEROUS---it opens you up to be exploited. Most people are not sociopaths of course, and if someone cuts you off in traffic it makes a lot more sense to attribute that to ordinary carelessness rather than extraordinary malice.
But in the particular...
That footnote about working on excusing the behavior of "bad drivers"* is good advice in general, and should probably be taught in driver's ed. I imagine if it was actually followed, incidences of road rage would plummet.
It's my goal to one day be able to do this most minor irritations, and to be able "to let what does not matter truly slide", or at least to the extent that I'm able.
*(I had to go back and add those quotes after I realized that without them I was doing exactly the opposite of that advice)
I find it very hard to actually dislike any particular person in a concrete sense. Abstractly, a trait or a group? Sure. Otherwise, "tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner", right? I might actually lean too far in this direction.. my mind immediately jumps to defend perceived faults by inventing possible reasons for them.
However, I've never been able to cultivate admiration, just grudging respect.
Having a whole project around liking someone seems like too much effort to me. Why do it? I'm more likely to find a less perception-based solution. (I am ...
Story, then tl;dr follows -
Tickling was a major weapon amongst kids I played with back when I was in elementary school (along with pinching, but only girls did that). I had the notion that "this would never do!" and "I have to worry about this all the time!" Somehow that got it in my head to try to desensitize myself to tickling.
I'd heard that it was impossible to tickle yourself, and after TRYING it, I took a guess: maybe it was because you already knew where and how you were going to be tickled?
Iteration 1: Quickly tickle myself by randomly flailing my arms at various places on my body. No dice.
Iteration 2: Notice that I'd synchronized my arms in the first iteration. Tried desynch-ing them. Still no good.
Iteration 3: Tried also using a feather in one hand. Nope.
Iteration 4: Closed my eyes in the process. I could feel the ticklish feeling!
Iteration 5: Did all of the above in an extremely dark, closed closet. Worked!
After I figured this out, I repeated the process a few times while gradually slowing down the speed of tickling. I've been non-ticklish since then. Caveats: some sensitivity has come back in my feet; less so around my stomach; I do not recall how ticklish I was before this desensitization.
tl;dr - I sat in a dark closet, with a feather in my hand, closed my eyes, and proceeded to flail my arms/fingers randomly at myself
It may be useful to catalogue our responses by our respective big 5 factor psychological profiles. I have some tentative hypotheses in mind, particularly that Openness mitigates dislike of a person. (I'm off to retake the test)
EDIT: Thanks all. Do you mind adding your individual reactions to the top-level post in your replies?
Forgive me if this has been adressed elsewhere, but doesn't the knowledge that you are -trying- to like them get in the way of success? You will always know that you are liking them on purpose and applying these techniques to make yourself like them, so how do you avoid this knowledge breaking the desired effect?
Anyway probably my biggest concern with cryonics is that if I was to die at my age (25), it would probably be in a way where I would be highly unlikely to be preserved before a large amount of decay had already occurred. If there was a law in this country (Australia) mandating immediate cryopreservation of the head for those contracted, I'd be much more interested.
Speaking of abnormal and cyronics:
Britney Spears allegedly wants to sign up with Alcor: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/entertainment/britney-spears-wants-to-be-frozen-after-death_100369339.html
Bears resemblance to: Ureshiku Naritai; A Suite of Pragmatic Considerations In Favor of Niceness
In this comment, I mentioned that I can like people on purpose. At the behest of the recipients of my presentation on how to do so, I've written up in post form my tips on the subject. I have not included, and will not include, any specific real-life examples (everything below is made up), because I am concerned that people who I like on purpose will be upset to find that this is the case, in spite of the fact that the liking (once generated) is entirely sincere. If anyone would find more concreteness helpful, I'm willing to come up with brief fictional stories to cover this gap.
It is useful to like people. For one thing, if you have to be around them, liking them makes this far more pleasant. For another, well, they can often tell, and if they know you to like them this will often be instrumentally useful to you. As such, it's very handy to be able to like someone you want to like deliberately when it doesn't happen by itself. There are three basic components to liking someone on purpose. First, reduce salience of the disliked traits by separating, recasting, and downplaying them; second, increase salience of positive traits by identifying, investigating, and admiring them; and third, behave in such a way as to reap consistency effects.
1. Reduce salience of disliked traits.
Identify the traits you don't like about the person - this might be a handful of irksome habits or a list as long as your arm of deep character flaws, but make sure you know what they are. Notice that however immense a set of characteristics you generate, it's not the entire person. ("Everything!!!!" is not an acceptable entry in this step.) No person can be fully described by a list of things you have noticed about them. Note, accordingly, that you dislike these things about the person; but that this does not logically entail disliking the person. Put the list in a "box" - separate from how you will eventually evaluate the person.
When the person exhibits a characteristic, habit, or tendency you have on your list (or, probably just to aggravate you, turns out to have a new one), be on your guard immediately for the fundamental attribution error. It is especially insidious when you already dislike the person, and so it's important to compensate consciously and directly for its influence. Elevate to conscious thought an "attribution story", in which you consider a circumstance - not a character trait - which would explain this most recent example of bad behavior.1 This should be the most likely story you can come up with that doesn't resort to grumbling about how dreadful the person is - that is, don't resort to "Well, maybe he was brainwashed by Martians, but sheesh, how likely is that?" Better would be "I know she was up late last night, and she does look a bit tired," or "Maybe that three-hour phone call he ended just now was about something terribly stressful."
Reach a little farther if you don't have this kind of information - "I'd probably act that way if I were coming down with a cold; I wonder if she's sick?" is an acceptable speculation even absent the least sniffle. If you can, it's also a good idea to ask (earnestly, curiously, respectfully, kindly! not accusatively, rudely, intrusively, belligerently!) why the person did whatever they did. Rest assured that if their psyche is fairly normal, an explanation exists in their minds that doesn't boil down to "I'm a lousy excuse for a person who intrinsically does evil things just because it is my nature." (Note, however, that not everyone can produce verbal self-justifications on demand.) Whether you believe them or not, make sure you are aware of at least one circumstance-based explanation for what they did.
Notice which situations elicit more of the disliked behaviors than others. Everybody has situations that bring out the worst in them, and when the worst is already getting on your nerves, you should avoid as much as possible letting any extra bubble to the surface. If you have influence of any kind over which roles this person plays in your life (or in general), confine them to those in which their worst habits are irrelevant, mitigated, or local advantages of some kind. Do not ask for a ride to the airport from someone who terrifies you with their speeding; don't propose splitting dessert with someone whose selfishness drives you up the wall; don't assign the procrastinator an urgent task. Do ask the speeder to make a quick run to the bank before it closes while you're (ever so inconveniently) stuck at home; do give the selfish person tasks where they work on commission; do give the procrastinator things to do that they'll interpret as ways to put off their other work.
2. Increase salience of positive traits.
Don't look at me like that. There is something. It's okay to grasp at straws a little to start. You do not have to wait to like someone until you discover the millions of dollars they donate to mitigating existential risk or learn that their pseudonym is the name of your favorite musician. You can like their cool haircut, or the way they phrased that one sentence the other week, or even their shoes. You can appreciate that they've undergone more hardship than you (if they have, but be generous in interpreting "more" when comparing incommensurate difficulties) - even if you don't think they've handled it that well, well, it was hard. You can acknowledge that they are better than you, or than baseline, or than any one person who you already like, at some skill or in some sphere of achievement. You can think they did a good job of picking out their furniture, or loan them halo effect from a relative or friend of theirs who you think is okay. There is something.
Learn more about the likable things you have discovered. "Catch them in the act" of showing off one of these fine qualities. As a corollary to the bit above about not putting them in roles that bring out their worst, try to put them in situations where they're at their best. Set them up to succeed, both absolutely and in your eyes. Speak to any available mutual friends about what more there is to like - learn how the person makes friends, what attracts people to them, what people get out of associating with them. Solicit stories about the excellent deeds of the target person. Collect material like you're a biographer terrified of being sued for libel and dreading coming in under page count: you need to know all the nice things there are to know.
It is absolutely essential throughout this process to cultivate admiration, not jealousy. Jealousy and resentment are absolutely counterproductive, while admiration and respect - however grudging - are steps in the right direction. Additionally, you are trying to use these features of the person. It will not further your goals if you discount their importance in the grand scheme of things. Do not think, "She has such pretty hair, why does she get such pretty hair when she doesn't deserve it since she's such an awful person? Grrr!" Instead, "She has such pretty hair. It's gorgeous to look at and that makes her nice to have around. I wonder if she has time to teach me how to do my hair like that." Or instead of: "Sure, he can speak Latin, but what the hell use is Latin? Does he think we're going to be invaded by legionaries and need him to be a diplomat?" it would be more useful towards the project of liking to think, "Most people don't have the patience and dedication to learn any second language, and it only makes it harder to pick one where there aren't native speakers available to help teach the finer points. I bet a lot of effort went into this."
3. Reap consistency effects.
Take care to be kind and considerate to the person. The odds are pretty good that there is something they don't like about you (rubbing someone the wrong way is more often bidirectional than not). If you can figure out what it is, and do less of it - at least around them - you will collect cognitive dissonance that you can use to nudge yourself to like the person. I mean, otherwise, why would you go to the trouble of not tapping your fingers around them, or making sure to pronounce their complicated name correctly, or remembering what they're allergic to so you can avoid bringing in food suitable for everyone but them? That's the sort of thing you do when you care how they feel, and if you care how they feel, you must like them at least a little. (Note failure mode: if you discover that something you do annoys them, and you respond with resentment that they have such an unreasonable preference about such a deeply held part of your identity and how dare they!, you're doing it wrong. The point isn't to completely make yourself over to be their ideal friend. You don't have to do everything. But do something.)
Seek to spend time around the person. This should drop pretty naturally out of the above steps: you need to acquire all this information from somewhere, after all. But seek their opinions on things, especially their areas of expertise and favorite topics; make small talk; ask after their projects, their interests, their loved ones; choose to hang out in rooms they occupy even if you never interact. (Note failure mode: Don't do this if you can feel yourself hating them more every minute you spend together or if you find it stressful enough to inhibit the above mental exercises. It is better to do more work on liking them from a distance if you are at this stage, then later move on to seeking to spend time with them. Also, if you annoy them, don't do anything that could be characterized as pestering them or following them around.)
Try to learn something from the person - by example, if they aren't interested in teaching you, or directly, if they are. It is possible to learn even from people who don't have significantly better skills than you. If they tell stories about things they've done, you can learn from their mistakes; if they are worse than you at a skill but use an approach to it that you haven't tried, you can learn how to use it; if nothing else, they know things about themselves, and that information is highly useful for the project of liking them, as discussed above. Put what you know about them into the context of their own perspective.
Note general failure mode: It would be fairly easy, using facsimiles of the strategy above, to develop smugness, self-righteousness, arrogance, and other unseemly attitudes. Beware if your inner monologue begins to sound something like "He's gone and broken the sink again, but I'm too good and tolerant to be angry. It wouldn't do any good to express my displeasure - after all, he can't take criticism, not that I judge him for this, of course. I'll be sure to put a note on the faucet and call the plumber to cover for his failure to do so, rather than nagging him to do it, as I know he'd fly off the handle if I reminded him - it's just not everyone's gift to accept such things, as it is mine, and as I am doing, right now, with him, by not being upset..."
This monologuer does not like the sink-breaker. This monologuer holds him in contempt, and thinks very highly of herself for keeping this contempt ostensibly private (although it's entirely possible that he can tell anyway). She tolerates his company because it would be beneath her not to; she doesn't enjoy having him around because she realizes that he has useful insights on relevant topics or even because he's decorative in some way. If you don't wind up really, genuinely, sincerely liking the person you set out to like, you are doing it wrong. This is not a credit to your high-mindedness, and thinking it is will not help you win.
1 A good time to practice this habit is when in a car. Make up stories about the traffic misbehaviors around you. "The sun is so bright - she may not have seen me." "That car sure looks old! I probably wouldn't handle it even half as well, no wonder it keeps stalling." "He's in a terrible hurry - I wonder if a relative of his is in trouble." "Perhaps she's on her cellphone because she's a doctor, on call - it then would really be more dangerous on net if she didn't answer the thing while driving." "He'd pull over if there were any place to do so, but there's no shoulder." Of course any given one of these is probably not true. But they make sense, and they are not about how everybody on the road is a maniac! I stress that you are not to believe these stories. You are merely to acknowledge that they are possibilities, to compensate for the deemphasis of hypotheses like this that the fundamental attribution error will prompt.